John Phillips: Interrogating Friends, Colleagues, and Heroes

One of the perks of my job is that I can just call famous folks willy-nilly and ask them personal questions, citing my job as justification.

June 2012
By
JOHN PHILLIPS
Illustrations By
BRETT AFFRUNTI

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One of the perks of my job is that I can just call famous folks willy-nilly and ask them personal questions, citing my job as justification. Last month, I called the vehicle line exec for the new SRT Viper and said, “I pretty much need to know everything you’ve done in the last two years.” Then I called his boss, Ralph Gilles (Senior VP of Chrysler Design), and said, “Hey, my man, I hear you’ve got a thing for Halle Berry.” Then I called my boyhood hero Hans Stuck and insisted he recall the time that Dieter Quester peed in his shampoo. Then I called Steve March Tormé and invited him to dinner at a Detroit-area sports bar called Mallie’s, where he downed a steak at a speed that would have alarmed Iowa fair-goers. “Tell me why you’re a car enthusiast,” I demanded. He did.

Steve, 59, is, indeed, the son of Mel the V. Fog, and, like his late father, is a world-class crooner, except his voice is more disciplined and articulate. He’s been reading C/D since he was nine, matching my own experience, and his love for cars developed as he grew up in Scarsdale, New York. “My dad had a Jag SS100 that I liked to ride in,” he recalled. “Now it resides in the Petersen Museum. He also had a huge Rolls Silver Cloud with the vanity plate EL PHOG.”

After Steve’s parents divorced, he and his mother moved to Beverly Hills, where she married Hal March, host of the TV game show The $64,000 Question. Hal also appeared on an episode of the Monkees’ TV show. The segment was called “Dance, Monkee, Dance.” Not many people can say that.

“Hal had a ’63 Pontiac Grand Prix and a ’67 dark-blue Jag S-type with two [seven-gallon] gas tanks,” Steve remembers. “My mom let me drive it around the block when I was 13. Then Hal bought a dealership in ­Beverly Hills—March/Deeb Oldsmobile. At the time, Hal was driving a two-tone tan-colored Bentley, a Ferrari 330GTC, and the inaugural [1966] Olds Toronado.”

At age 15, Steve landed a job at the dealership. “I mostly drove the Oldsmobiles—illegally—between the store and the body shop,” he says. “But there was a Triumph TR4 on the lot, which I commandeered to visit my girlfriend. Along the way, I skidded in the rain and lightly rear-ended another car. I hightailed it, thinking there wasn’t time for the driver to catch my license. When I got back to the store, Hal and the general manager came running out. My dad said, ‘Steven, we know about the lady you smacked on Cañon Drive.’ Then the police called. My dad told them that an unknown teenager had taken the car for a joy ride. He offered to pay for the damage. I promised Hal I’d never do it again. But, oddly, he wasn’t all that mad.

“My first car—purchased in part with funds earned at the dealership—was a 1967 Sunbeam Alpine, with red and white racing stripes that I applied myself, along with fake knockoffs and Lucas fog lamps to handle all the fog on Beverly Drive. The car was later vandalized by Beverly Hills High School hoodlums. Then a ’74 VW Beetle. Mine caught fire one day. And on the following day. Then a beige ’76 BMW 2002. I never changed the oil, and the valve guides did an awful thing. Then a Rabbit GTI, a brown Ford Mustang II with a black vinyl top—my second car to spontaneously combust. A Mitsubishi Eclipse GS. And now I’m driving a BMW 330i called the ‘Blue Beast.’ It still hasn’t burst into flames. There’s time.”

I asked Steve what cars he’d most like to own. Turns out they’re the cars his pals owned in the ’60s. “My boyhood friend was Desi Arnaz Jr., and he had a convertible Aston Martin DB6 with a red leather interior and pearl-white paint that had an undercoat of red luminescence that you could see on a sunny day. He also had a light-yellow Ferrari [250GT] California convertible. I also hung out with Dean Martin’s son Dino, who was the first person I knew who owned a Lambor­ghini Miura. What’s more, he bought a Ferrari P4 and had it flown back to the States. His younger brother, Ricci, owned a De Tomaso Mangusta. Then there was Billy Hinsche, the third member of the band ‘Dino, Desi, and Billy.’ He drove a ­Marcos. His sister married [Beach Boy] Carl Wilson. At about 10 o’clock one night, Wilson’s brother Dennis talked me into taking a ride down near the marina in L.A. to test-drive a late-’50s Chevrolet Bel Air convertible. Dennis paid the guy cash for it, on the spot. We drove off. The rest of the night is not the clearest in my rich and varied history.”

As a 50-year C/D subscriber, Steve seemed like someone who could offer the magazine sound advice. He obliged. “Lose the ad for Athena Pheromones. Really, am I the first to comment on this?”

I asked Steve if he had contact info for Halle Berry. On my to-call list, she’s next.

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